Soups as a Medium of Exchange - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Soups as a Medium of Exchange

 

In today’s trading soups were generally down

Although vegetable beef found a brisk trade

Potato soup was bullish in Block D

And each minestrone was five cigarettes

 

The market closed slightly up at evening count

But this could not compensate for the day’s fall

Naked-lady tats are expected to go high this week

Ten soups for an inked image of yo’ mama

 

The morning market will open in this metal hell

When some dumb **** rings that ****ing bell

The List is Death - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The List is Death

 

There is said to be a list – but whose?

Who wrote it? Where is it? Where has it been?

On what teakwood desk does it now repose

Around which names and lives are negotiated

 

The matter is not that names are being removed

But that your name might be written in

Because your attitude has been noticed

The hand that once shook yours signs away your life

 

Someone pencils your name upon The List

That’s your loyalty reward (you won’t be missed)

 

Thoughts ‘n’ prayers as in Two Corinthians

Authority Over Everything on the Earth - rhyming doggerel

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Authority Over Everything on the Earth

 

Sirach 17:1-15

 

You can’t be authority over all the earth

If in the end you are buried under it

What are man’s honors and dignity worth

When man is nobly dropped into a pit

Prancing Chainsaw Dude - senryu

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Prancing Chainsaw Dude

 

Prancing chainsaw dude

Humiliates all of us

But we obey him

The Seven Seeing-Stones - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Seven Seeing-Stones

 

Good Tolkien writes of spring far better than we

With layered allusions to Celtic and Nordic myths

His Fairy Folk sing clearly in rainbow rhymes

Among the crocuses abloom ‘round ancient trees

 

My crocuses bloom ‘round a shaggy lawn

With garden furniture in need of paint

And morning coffee in a Tupperware cup

To serve as a greeting to the rising sun

 

Friend Tolkien writes of spring for you and me

And through his Seven Seeing-Stones – we see!

Scriptual Textual Analysis Applied to Act II of Macbeth - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Scriptural Textual Analysis Applied to Act II of Macbeth

 

The Book of Steve Jobs 43:13-16

 

“Oh, no, Mr. Hall!

It’s right here in the Bible!” she exclaimed

Standing up suddenly from her desk

Eagerly waving her MePhone aloft

 

And then she paused

Appeared to be slightly embarrassed

Laughed

Took a selfie

 

And laughed some more

 

As did we all

 

Happiness

You Were Dancing Up the Lane - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

You Were Dancing Up the Lane

 

In an old lawn chair I sat and dozed

And felt amber dusk sealing the day

Though I was weary and my eyes were half-closed

I heard you – you, whistling a romantic lay

 

You were skipping barefoot up the lane

Your skirt all a-dance for your heart’s desire

O Lady-Queen of our happy demesne

With flowers for me, your most devoted squire

 

I awoke, I blinked – I was all alone -

The sun had set on us, many years gone

 

But I saw you dancing up the lane…

The Church Garage Sale - doggerel

 

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Church Garage Sale

 

(Although the garage sale is in the parish hall because there is no garage)

 

 

A garage sale is a rebuke to us all -

The metaphysical finger having writ

Turns now from that lost Babylonian wall

And points at us as if to scribe this bit:

 

Why did you buy these masses of junk at all?

Candy-Colored Canes in the Waiting Room - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Candy-Colored Canes in the Waiting Room

 

In the waiting room: rows of colored canes

Aluminum canes for the weak of breath and gait

For us who suffer from imbalance and pains -

We also swerve who only sit and wait

I Believe in Love, NOW STAY AWAY - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

I Believe in Love, NOW STAY AWAY

 

In the tiny coffee shop all the tables were full

A man kept his table to himself

And would not acknowledge anyone

Defensive behind his deep-thoughts book

 

The rest of us shared our tables and space

Exchanging greetings, pleasantries, and thanks

Passing the cream and sweeteners and napkins around

All

Except for that one poor sullen man

 

On the cover was a drawing of a Christian dove -

His book was entitled I Believe in Love

Graveside Service on a Blustery Day - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Graveside Service on a Blustery Day

 

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new”

 

Tennyson, Idylls of the King

 

The widower assisted to his place

Mourners in unaccustomed dresses and suits

A bible, leaflets fluttering in the wind

And gangly teens unsure what they should do

 

February clouds roiling and boiling

Even the officiant’s words are blown away

Prayers lifted into silence by the wind

They may have fallen by the gravediggers’ tractor

 

Or were blown through the leaning chain-link fence

Into the deeply darkening Grendel-woods

 

But still – in back –

                                a boy and a girl shyly touch hands

The Problems with Self-Publishing - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Problems with Self-Publishing

 

The problems with self-publishing are self-publishers:

“Everyone just loves my book; tell me what you think

It’s about my cousin who was a Navy SEAL

And then became a millionaire and then a priest

 

“He saved the nation from nuclear warfare

In a mission so classified that we can’t talk about it

(But he told me all about it, of course)

And then he saved souls and counseled with popes

 

“My book is inspired by the Holy Spirit

So read it tonight and tell me what you think”

Has All the Gold Been Stolen from Fort Knox? - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Has All the Gold Been Stolen from Fort Knox?

 

Elon Musk encouraged to crack open Fort Knox and audit the gold reserves

-New York Post, 16 February 2025

 

President Musk will now make an audit

Of the gold in Fort Knox, down to the dime

But all he will find (he may have already caught it)

Is the missing TP from the covid time!

Go Ask Your Father - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Go Ask Your Father

 

“Go ask your father.”

 

“Go ask your mother.”

 

“She said to ask you.”

 

“Go ask her anyway.”

 

“Go ask your father again.”

 

“He said to ask you.”

 

“Well I told you to ask him.”

 

“It’s your mother’s decision.”

 

“He says it’s your decision.”

 

“It’s okay with me if it’s okay with your mother.”

 

“It’s okay with me if it’s okay with your father.”

 

 

That was always soooooooooooooooo annoying.

 

 

I wish I could be that annoyed again.

Portrait of monsieur Gaudry and His Daughter - a poem based on the painting

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Portrait of Monsieur Gaudry and His Daughter

 

For all Daughters and Their Fathers

 

Monsieur is dressed for a quiet evening at home

As is his daughter in her cozy white wrap

Leaning dutifully upon his shoulder as he predicts

With globe and maps the empires of her mind

 

The empires of her mind which she will rule

With subtle wit and work instead of war

With armies of thought and beauty and art and truth

To conquer chaos and set the world aright

 

This guardian of goodness in a little girl’s guise

(But inwardly, I think, she’s rolling her eyes)

 

 

“The Geography Lesson,” Louis-Leopold Boilly, 1812, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Each Kiss is a Distraction - a poor attempt at a senryu

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Each Kiss is a Distraction

 

While we weren’t watching

They might have declared war on Canada

We’d better check around

Watching the Rain Without You - poem

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Watching the Rain Without You

 

The rain is incomplete without you

If you were here we could sit on the couch

I’d put a Frank Sinatra on the machine

So he and the rain could sing to us

 

But especially to you

 

The rain is incomplete without you

If you were here we could lie on the floor

As I read the funny papers to you

And do you like good ol’ Charlie Brown?

 

But of course you do

 

The rain is incomplete without you

It misses you almost as much as I

 

Almost

Groovin' on Graveyards - a poem about the night shift

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Graveyard Shift

 

At two in the morning everything is old

The hours, the work, the fluorescent lights

The air, the night, flickering computer screens

Even the freshly-made coffee in the break room

 

At two in the morning everything is old

The way the new guy snuffles his dripping nose

The cleaning lady’s mop bucket and its rattling roll

The snoopervisor’s totally fake good cheer

 

At two in the morning everything is old

“You’ll love the fellowship on graveyards,” I was told

A Penny Saved is a Worthless Zinc Disk Gathering Dust in a Drawer - doggerel

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Penny Saved is a Worthless Zinc Disc Gathering Dust in a Drawer

 

 

“Feed the birds, tuppounds a bag…”

 

-as Mary Poppins did not sing

 

 

It seems that our last penny has been spent

We will miss the fakey copper glint

Our other pot-metal coinage should take the hint:

We do not have a stable governMINT

My Shakespearean Girl - sonnet

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

My Shakespearean Girl

 

I woke in sadness that the dream had passed

But joyed that the vision had come at all             

To comfort me with happy memories cast

Into my sleep through moonlight on the wall

 

Through moonlight on the wall, through starlit sky

That long-ago world in our golden youth

When she danced as lightly as a butterfly

Through sunlit fields where all was truth

 

Through sunlit fields on her little bare feet

As gracefully as a leaping summer fawn

Or rhyme and meter when in verse they meet

In that magic hour whence breathes the dawn

 

In that magic hour we were once more

So very close to that opening door…